John / John is on Nostr

Reformed Baptist, Single Dad of a tremendous 12 year old boy, USAF veteran, #Bitcoin, #Carnivore, Soli Deo Gloria!

Last Notes

2024-04-23 13:33:04 UTC

From my pastor: MOST EMBARRASSING FAILED DISPENSATIONAL PROPHECIES, candidate five
"Antichrist Identification"
First off, even calling the End Times supervillain THE Antichrist is biblically shaky. "The Man of Sin" or the First Beast or the Little Horn would be more correct. (John describes "antichrist" as a spirit, not an individual man.) But Antichrist is easily the most marketable of those labels so we'll run with it.
The embarrassing bit I'm referencing is the cascade of wrong guesses that have flowed out, and continue to flow out, from believers who have the Revelation open, highlighter in hand, while watching Fox News.
I don't have a lot of memories before the 70's but I've been alive to see every President of the US, the USSR and Russia, and Israel since then; plus the Prime Ministers of every prominent European power, plus every Pope; plus anyone who achieved any sort of world-status in international affairs, identified as the Antichrist. In fact, just hours before I wrote this post, a FB friend suggested (I think seriously) President Macron of France. This paragraph has probably only scratched the surface of the constant stream of guesses that have all come up false.
At least, with guessing the timing of the Rapture, we have a warning from Jesus that no man knows the day. That doesn't stop those bad guesses, but I'm thinking it probably does curb them a bit. With the Antichrist, there's no such warning against trying to identify him, and so the wrong guesses fly like clay pigeons at a skeet shoot.
If this is what your interpretive scheme produces in every place it's taught, a non-stop avalanche of false warnings, don't you have to consider that the underlying problem is systemic?
#faith #bible #christian #endtimes

2024-04-23 13:31:36 UTC

From my pastor: MOST EMBARRASSING FAILED DISPENSATIONAL PROPHECIES, candidate three
“The Third Temple”
Immediately, I’ll be met with this answer, even before I start explaining anything. The Dispensationalist will say, “It’s coming, though! You just wait! You call it failed now, but what if it gets built in the next twenty years?”
The issue is timing, though. The same believer who says, “Just wait!” also believes the Rapture could happen later today, and we’d be in the End Times seven-year period called the Great Tribulation. They see this period described in (roughly) Revelation 6-18. Everything in this section has to be done in the seven years immediately following the Rapture.
The issue is that Revelation 11:1-2 has a temple in Jerusalem, being trampled down and overrun by the nations for 42 months, or the second half of the seven years. This means the temple has to be up and running at this point, midway through the Great Tribulation.
I realize that there are a number of groups that currently advocate for building a new temple in Jerusalem. I’ve seen reports talking about all the resources and items they’ve amassed that could be used in its construction.
The very same sorts of stories were being excitedly shared among the Dispensationalists when I was converted to Christ in 1989. I read them and was thrilled by them. Then some old-timers off-handedly mentioned that those stories had been told and repeated for decades already, even at that time.
Now, again, with the caveat that God can do anything at any time, a quick look at the political situation will yield (to the mind of anyone without a Dispensationalist agenda) that any new temple in Jerusalem is nowhere on the horizon.
But, but, the Rapture could happen today! And that’s the big failure of the Dispensational scheme here: For the Rapture to be imminent, the new temple needs to be at least mostly complete. In the world we actually live in, this is a pipe dream. If the temple isn’t right around the corner, then neither is the Great Tribulation. It is a failure of the system that its leaders have been confidently calling it imminent (any moment now!) for at least 80 years.
#faith #bible #christian #endtimes

2024-03-24 00:15:38 UTC

"Behind the intellectual objections to the Bible and Christianity is the moral issue that keeps rebels of God from submitting to him.
If God is God, then you are not free to live your life any longer as if you are unaccountable to Him." --Zachary Conover
#faith #bible #christian